UPDATED: April 12, 2024, 3:50PM EDT
Top cryptocurrencies saw a sudden price downturn Friday afternoon as total liquidations edged toward half a billion within an hour.
It’s not clear exactly what caused the sudden dip in crypto market performance. The drop in prices could be due to events not directly related to the cryptocurrency market, such as the conflict between Iran and Israel. Earlier Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters he expects Iran will attack Israel “sooner than later.”
Total cryptocurrency liquidations hit $466.5 million from about 2:00 p.m. ET to 3:00 p.m. ET Friday, according to the crypto liquidations tracker CoinGlass. Of this, long liquidations hit $417.7 million and short liquidations reached $50.6 million.
CoinGlass finds that within the past 24 hours, total liquidations reached $858.15 million among 270,018 traders.
Major token prices fell during the past hour in what many are calling a “flash crash.” Bitcoin’s price fell from about $68,116 to $66,400 in that time frame as well, a 2.5% drop. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is down 5.3% over the past 24 hours.
Ethereum’s token price also fell about 3.3% from $3,324 to $3,226 in the past hour, seeing its price fall 8.11% overall within the past day.
The token price of Solana also fell about 8.5% from $166 to $152 recently. Its 24-hour change was a negative 13.25%, according to The Block’s prices.
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About Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.